Leading Up to Finals

The interesting thing about Aaron's MBA program is that it does quarters rather than semesters. So, for the length of a semester, he has two different quarters with two different sets of classes, midterms, and finals.

His first finals week started after the first weekend in October. On Saturday we grabbed breakfast with Aaron before he headed up to campus to study.

While Aaron studied his little heart out, the kiddos and I stayed home for a wonderful weekend of General Conference. So grateful that the sessions are broadcast via the internet.

For the rest of Saturday and Sunday we hung on the couch, in our pajamas, soaking in the wonderful messages shared by the leaders of the LDS church.

Grace made sure that all dolls, and humans, were kept in optimum health.

In the evenings we made dinner and met up with Aaron on campus to spend some time together as a family. I could tell he was really feeling the pressure of finals and wanted nothing more than to do his absolute best.

Sunday night, the night before finals, we went to bed early. Tackling his first final would be better with a good nights rest. So we laid down, said our prayers and 'I love yous' and got to bed.

At 3:40 in the morning my brain was ripped from sleepfulness to consciousness. It took a few seconds for my ears to adjust to the screeching sound of our severe weather alarms going off. The first thing Aaron said to me was, "Cover his ears!" Meaning for me to cover Christian's ears and protect him from the awful noise emitting from the tiny boxes installed in our walls. I rushed into the living room where Christian was sleeping in his bassinet and discovered that the noise wasn't as bad in the living room. When I knew his ears were safe I rushed to Grace's room. She was laying face down on her pillow covering her ears. I scooped her out of bed and shut her door, we shut the door to our room, and huddled in the living room. I rocked Grace in the recliner hoping that, by some miracle, she would fall back to sleep. Aaron stood a few feet away from me, we were all groggy and out of it, and the wailing of the alarms grated our sleep-addled brains like nails on a chalkboard. Aaron's voice cut through the noise. "This is my worst nightmare." On the eve of his first finals week, after countless hours spent studying, we sat there not knowing if the alarms would go off. We didn't evacuate since it wasn't the fire alarms going off, but rather the severe weather alarms which were in a different location. These are the same alarms that went off when our building was struck by lightening a year or so ago. Some of our neighbors congregated outside and started talking. We realized that the alarms throughout the whole building were going off. We saw a family that lives downstairs climb into their car and drive off. I turned to Aaron, "Why don't you go to a hotel? Just leave now." He replied, "Let's just see how it goes and if they turn off."

Then the firefighters arrived. They poured out of the truck in full gear and went throughout the building inspecting to see what was going on.

During their inspection the alarms finally turned off, at 4:01am. Twenty-one minutes after they went off initially.

I got Grace back to sleep and nursed Christian while Aaron did his best to get his brain out of panic mode and back into sleep mode. His alarm went off when it should and finals week began. The whole week Aaron was either taking a final or studying for one so we didn't see much of him. But we sent him a picture every morning wishing him good luck.

 I love this picture. I just die over their hand holding.

Apparently Christian wears these yellow ducky pajamas quite frequently.

Aaron did really well on his finals, even with the alarm incident, and then we got to spend all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with him. No school on the mind or anything, it was wonderful.